APRIL 2001: For a LONG time, I have been leery of messing with my exhaust system. I know it's probably one of the most common upgrades, second to an aftermarket intake filter - of which I took well beyond normal mod levels with my Custom Cold Air Intake. Reason for my hesitation was I liked my power/torque curve, and didn't wanna give up the strong low-end of the RPM range that my car has. I had driven non-turbo Stealths with the Borla cat-back system and felt no real difference, and the similar was true of the few cars with custom exhausts I had driven. Granted the sound was different, and nice I must add, but for the money of purchasing an exhaust system, the performance just wasn't there. Notice I said for the money...

Well, on January 1, 2001, I picked up Dave Best's stock exhaust from his 92 VR-4, with the intention of trying it out on my car. Total cost? A lunch (thanks Dave!!) Hey, for that price, I'll try about anything :-) I finally got around to getting it on the car March 31st. Gotta say that so far I totally LOVE it! from the 100 miles or so I've driven it since it's been on the car, it seems to have definitely helped out by adding some power. My low end truly seems to be just as strong, if not a hair stronger, but it seems to have more and longer/stronger pull in the top-end of the RPM range. And the sound of it is straight up awesome. Definitely has a throatier growl than the whisper of before. So much for "stealth mode".

I documented parts of the install with my digicam and also made a few audio recordings: stock exhaust, no exhaust (while it was removed with only the cat), after installing the VR-4 exhaust. For the benefit of others thinking of doing this, I'll document the process and nuances below. But for now, here's the pictures I took. Still gotta get a good final one of the exhaust installed and cleaned up. Looks sooooo much nicer with the dual exhaust!

Picture 01 & 02: The exhaust loaded up in my car for the trip over to Steve Burrows of 3SExperts to get his help in installing it. Also, he has air-tools - makes getting bolts off a helluva lot easier (thanks Steve!). Talk about the ultimate rice-boy exhaust!

Picture 04: After much fighting of many bolts (mainly the two holding the exhaust to the cat, others were pretty easy), plenty of rust-dust and other sh!t falling in my face, I lined up the two exhausts side-by-side for a few shots. Notice the stock non-turbo exhaust has an additional resonator inline. Also, the piping on the VR-4 exhuast was a fair amount larger (maybe 1/2" to 3/4" bigger diameter). But the bolts lined up no problems on the cat. We used some wire to strap/tie the active exhaust valve into the open position, allowing the air to go thru both pipes (hopefully that's how wer did it!). We went under the assumption that the spring action of the valve closed the valve, so we tied it accordingly (pulled it around and tied it).

Picture 06: This simply shows the under-carriage of the car, sans any exhaust.

Picture 10: Adding a dual exhaust on the non-turbo Stealths requires you to cut out an opening in the rear fascia. It being made of simple rubber, this is no real challenge. Once we had the exhaust quasi-bolted up, I made the cuts to get the passenger side tips in their proper location (Steve it pictured here). It's pretty easy to know where to cut - on the inside of the panel is a ridge that outlines the section to cut out, just cut along that and you've got a perfect cutout that matches the driver's side. I still need to finish the cutout and clean it up, smooth it out, and apply a little touch-up paint along the inner edges so they're blue.

Picture 13: I took a photo of this specific bend in the exhaust piping because it posed problem. But it wasn't one that a heavy mallet couldn't take care of :-) The VR-4 piping is bigger in diameter, and also, it cuts at less of an angle than does the stock non-turbo exhaust. So when I was trying to mount everything up in there, the pipe was hitting the dreiver-side rear control arm, and wouldn't reach all the mount points (and wouldn't reach that catalytic converter). We did two things to solve this problem:
1) Hammered in the inside of the bend that was hitting the control arm mount. We banged it in about a half inch so there was enough clearance for the exhaust to clear the control arm and also allow enough room to get a tool at the bolts there for adjusting the camber of the rear driver-side wheel.
2) Extended the pipe between the cat and the bend. If you look at the stock single exhaust in Picture 04, there is a bolted joint between the resonator and the bends before the muffler. On the VR-4 exhaust there is actually a clamped joint between two overlapping pipes. We had to loosen that connection and extend the pipe so it would reach and bolt up to the cat. Once everything was in place, I clamped that back down nice-n-tight.

Picture 16: This is just a first shot of the exhaust "installed" on the car, even though the car is still floating off the ground :-)

Picture 17 - 19: These are a few pictures of the exhaust installed. Now picture 19 doesn't actually show it, but the passenger side is initially hung with a wire coat hanger. Why? Well, this car didn't have a dual exhaust so there are no brackets on the passenger side. All the mounting holes are there for the brackets, but there are just no brackets. I've got the brackets on order and will install them as soon as they arrive. There's actually two, one that's in the rear-passenger wheel well, and one that's just before the tips and just above the tow-hook on that side. A coathanger probably wouldn't pass state inspection.

Picture 20: Just loved the look of the car floating off the ground so I added this one. I'll take a couple of it installed tomorrow and get them added here. It really does look and sound better with this exhaust.

Picture 21 - 23: The first couple pictures of the exhaust installed. The day was hazy yukky grey and the car need washing (as does the exhaust!), but you get the picture. "Get the picture"... Get it? hahaha :-) Sorry, bad...

June 17, 2001: Trying an experiment. (I just got my car inspected so I have some time :-). There have been some test pipes available on Ebay for pretty cheap. For those that don't know, a "test pipe" is a straight steel pipe that is placed inline in the exhaust in place of the catalytic converter, i.e., remove the cat, insert the test pipe. The goal is to lessen the restriction on the exhaust gases as they pass thru the exhaust system. Anyway, I acquired a test pipe for $25 and figured I'd give it a try on a non-turbo Stealth and see how it affects things. Now remember I already have the much-freer-flowing exhaust from a 3000GT VR-4...

Well, first off, installation was a PITA. The bolts connecting the cat to the exhaust came off with relatively not much fuss as they had just been off a couple months ago to install the exhaust. The bolts connecting the cat to the downpipe, well, lets just say I completely break the bolt head off one (me so tough!) and ended up going after the other with a cutter. So if I put the cat back on, I'll be drilling a couple holes to put new bolts thru... When I got under there with the test pipe, it was then I realized the bolts that were sent with the pipe were not really long enough, and one was 1/4" shorter than the other three at that!! So I put three on and left it at that for the day (parts stores already closed). Anyway, it's in there pretty tight with 3 bolts so I took it off the jacks and drove it home (stopped at Walmart for new bolts to put in).

Holy mother of nature!! This thing is soooooooo loud! Consider it... It's basically a straight pipe right off the manifolds - no cat, and a larger exhaust. It screams! It's almost too loud for me. I may actually use it only on trips to the track, swap out the cat for the pipe the night before, or something like that. Not sure yet. As for power, I lost some of the low-end jump that my car had. But in the top end (like 4500 RPM and up) this thing pulls like crazy! And funny thing is, it KEEPS pulling right thru redline and beyond! I ran it thru third gear hard and it didn't stop pulling until I shifted at 7200. It didn't kinda give out at 6400 or so.

I'll hafta decide whether I want to run like this all the time or just use it for the track. Somehow I think I may end up with it as a track toy. It's just obscenely loud without the cat in there. Perhaps I'll look into one of the Random Technologies High Flow cats... I posted a couple new sound files of the car without the cat or exhaust, and with the test pipe and VR4 exhaust. Listen for yourself. I hope you have a subwoofer in your sound system...